NUS calls for resignation of student loans chief

The National Union of Students has called for the chief executive of the Student Loans Company, Ralph Seymour-Jackson, to resign.

The call for resignation came on Tuesday 27 October after new figures revealed that, as of 18 October, 146,000 students had still not received funds despite their applications having been approved.

NUS President Wes Streeting said: “This year, hundreds of thousands of students have been affected by late payments or lost documents and have endured a miserable start to term. The SLC has given students a string of broken promises about when they should expect to receive some or all of their loan payments.”

Nouse reported in September that the SLC had been unable to cope with the huge influx of applications this year, which left 150, 000 applications out of almost a million still not processed before the start of the academic year.

The problem resulted in what Phil Willis, the MP who chairs the Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee, called “chaos . . . a huge, bureaucratic nightmare.”

“SLC bosses have failed to acknowledge the distress they have caused to students, and have sought to apportion blame anywhere other than their own doorstep.” added Streeting

YUSU President Tim Ngwena commented that; “I’m keen to see an urgent resolution to this matter. The issue currently is the backlog and taking the focus away from that won’t help the matter. Once the issue is resolved, a serious assessment into why it happened is needed and the necessary action to remedy that should be thought of then.”

damn right. still not got my loan. Im skint as. How long does it take to look at a number (that being the household income) and make a decision on how much the student should receive based on that? trained monkeys could do it!